[its_down_again]

I work great under pressure, but leaning on that long-term keeps me in a constant state of high stress, which messes with my baseline mood. I’ve found that clearing my head really helps, and I’ve been using the Sam Harris meditation app for that.

Most mornings, I’ll get a run in before work, and sometimes I do track workouts with my Garmin watch + VO2 app. The VO2 app has preset workouts e.g a warm-up mile, 4x400m at a target pace with 1-minute recoveries, then a cool-down mile. My Garmin tracks everything—the distances and the pace I actually ran—so I’m not having to think too much about it during the workout.

Afterwards, I get a summary with accuracy ratings on how close I was to my distance and pace targets. It’s awesome because I can track my performance over time and actually see that I’m hitting faster paces with less effort. That’s been great for building my confidence. I’ve been wanting something similar for desk work—a “workout plan” of timed laps to guide me through tasks and track my focus duration.

I’ve put together a rough version where I ask ChatGPT to make me a “workout plan” for desk tasks, and I made a lap-timer app on my Mac to parse it. Made a quick quick video showing an example for emails, though I'm not opening emails for the demo—just hitting the laps. https://youtu.be/tH7KFLC2640

If anyone knows of a better solution, I'm willing to try!